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The GodMachine
'The Eye of Heaven'The Oracle of the Obrimos retreated into darkness from the battles with the Exarchs, the Path lit by the burning shards of the Great Ladder as they fell streaming from the sky to the Earth below. The Oracle did not Fall with the Ladder, but caught hold of something in the firmament, a fixed star in the blackness of the Heavens. That star was as a silver wheel, and its turning was that of a gear, raising the Oracle up and over, out of the darkness and back down into a deeper mystery. The corridor into which the silver gear emerged was lined with endless turning wheels and spindles of gold, silver and glass, making an endless whirring chorus of celestial music. “What is this place?” the Oracle asked, for it was like no part of the Celestial City ever seen before. “Behind, between,” a voice whispered from the shadows of the gears, as something scuttled past on many clicking legs, “machine.” “Inside, above, below,” another voice responded, and, as the Oracle paced the corridor, a chorus of voices became audible, whispering secret names, and words and ciphers, leading the way toward great doors of beaten gold, engraved with sigils and figures that seemed to march across their surface in an endless procession. The Oracle tried to read them, but the symbols moved too fast, scrolling out of sight before their meaning could be grasped. “Within, without,” the voices whispered. “Inside-out.” The Oracle grasped the handles of the great doors. They were warm to the touch. “Before, between, sights unseen.” The doors were not locked and opened at the Oracle’s urging. Light, pure and blinding and powerful, poured like golden honey from those portals. It made the air around the Oracle buzz and there was the sound of distant thunder, voices rising to a crescendo. “Was, is, can-be, I see, eye see, Eye see . . . ” The voices were drowned out in a peal of thunder as the Oracle beheld the great burning eye at the center of the light, and the eye looked, and through it the Oracle saw, and heard, and felt, and knew and became. A fire burned bright from the summit of the Watchtower of the Golden Key, and, to the people of the Fallen World, it was as if the stars doubled in their intensity and a new bright star was born in the Heavens above, flashing its brilliance across the whole of the world. Those who raised their eyes from the Fallen World toward the Eye of Heaven, in that moment, they too, saw, and heard, and felt and knew — and became. The particle collision, the pattern it produced, it had unlocked a door that had kept Russ’ tiny and forgotten alcove in the universe safe. But now the door was open. The residents of a larger house had noticed, and they were coming to renovate. Russ and his neighbors were the tools, the swarms were the workers. When the job was done, things more terrible and beautiful would arrive. It was hard for Russ to think of words to describe them. Clockwork angels, black suns, ancient children, a god machine.